Eric Trappier, Dassault Aviation’s Chief Executive Officer, has dismissed Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s allegations stating, “I don’t lie. The truth I declared before and the statements I made are true. I don’t have a reputation for lying. In my position as CEO, you don’t lie,” in an interview to news agency ANI.

Earlier, the Congress President has claimed in a series of tweets that the Dassault Chief had lied about the details of the Dassault-Reliance Joint Venture (JV) for offset contracts in the Rafale Jet deal.

Rahul Gandhi had tweeted, “It is clear that the Dassault CEO is lying. If an enquiry starts on this, Modi is not going to survive it. Guaranteed.”

On the topic of Dassault’s choice of Reliance as a partner in the Joint Venture (JV), Trappier said, “We are not putting the money in Reliance. The money is going into the JV. I put my knowhow free of charge on how to produce people. I have engineers and workers from Dassault who are taking the lead as far as the industrial part of this deal is concerned.”

He added, “At the same time, I have an Indian company like Reliance who is putting money into this JV as they want to develop their country. So the company is going to know how to produce aircraft.”

Trappier said that the shareholding pattern in the JV is 49 per cent Dassault and 51 per cent Reliance as per prescribed government norms. He stated, “We are supposed to put in this company together about Rs 800 crore as 50:50. We have already put Rs 40 crores. But it will be increased to Rs 800 crores, which implies Rs 400 crore by Dassault in the coming five years.”

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